How This 36-YO Indian Origin 'Fake Trader' Caused A $1 Trillion Stock Market Crash In US

From causing a $1 trillion market crash single-handedly by sitting in his bedroom in London, to being arrested in 2015 and put on house arrest for a year in 2020, the story of Indian-origin trader Navinder Singh Sarao is seldom talked about.

When A 36-YO Indian Trader Caused A $1 Trillion Stock Market Crash

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Navinder Singh Sarao, a stock trader who operated out of his bedroom in west London, had wreaked havoc in markets when his fake trades helped trigger a sudden $1 trillion stock market crash. The 'flash crash' in value across the major stock market indexes lasted 36 minutes in May 2010, as per a CNBC report.

Five years after the 36-year-old trader was arrested in his parents¡¯ suburban London home for manipulating markets, he was ordered by a U.S. judge to go back there for a year of house arrest in 2020, implying that he was holed up in the same bedroom where he had committed his crimes.

During his sentence hearing in Chicago in 2020, even the prosecutors urged the judge to let Navinder go home as a free man, citing his autism diagnosis and his ¡°extraordinary cooperation¡± in helping the government build other cases. But the U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall insisted that the serial spoofer face some kind of punishment for endangering the global economy, beyond the four months he had already served in the U.K., as per a Bloomberg report.

Navinder Sarao may have treated markets like a computer game, Judge Kendall said, but that ¡°does not impact the seriousness of what happened¡± on May 6, 2010, when markets lost $1 trillion in five minutes before rebounding. Exactly how much Sarao¡¯s trading contributed to the so-called Flash Crash remains a subject of considerable debate.

The sentencing caps one of the more remarkable financial stories in recent memory, one that reveals much about the precarious nature of modern electronic financial markets and the failure of regulators and exchanges to adequately police them.

Also Read: How The Stock Market Crash Of 1929 Led To World War II

How He Learnt To Trade Alone

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Navinder Sarao learned to trade in an arcade above a supermarket after applying to a newspaper ad in 2003. From nothing, he built a bankroll of millions of dollars, buying and selling S&P 500 futures while wearing a tracksuit and a pair of red, heavy-duty ear defenders to block out sound.

After a few years, Navinder returned to his bedroom to trade alone, surrounded by stuffed animals and Lionel Messi memorabilia, according to court documents.

Sarao made tens of millions of dollars, but he didn¡¯t tell his family or friends because he was worried they would treat him differently. His most extravagant purchase was a secondhand Volkswagen. But when a new breed of ultrafast, sophisticated market participants known as high-frequency traders showed up and squeezed day traders like Sarao out of the market, he took the fateful decision to fight back, paying a programmer to build a machine he called the NAVTrader, the Bloomberg report mentioned.

The program, which allowed Sarao to place and then cancel huge orders, tricking high frequency traders' firms¡¯ algorithms, proved wildly effective: On his most successful day, Sarao made more than $4 million. But it also destabilised markets, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, including on the already volatile day of the Flash Crash.

It would take another five years and an eagle-eyed whistle-blower for Sarao to get caught. In that time, he entrusted his winnings to a cast of unscrupulous investors who promised him guaranteed, double-digit returns. Instead, he lost everything he made ¡ª about $70 million, according to his lawyers ¡ª something they only discovered when they were trying to get $5 million together for bail.

Plot Twist

While Sarao was awaiting extradition to the U.S., he became a hero to many. Still, his legal team faced an uphill struggle. Sarao had kept incriminating videos of himself trading and sent emails to a programmer spelling out his desire to ¡°spoof (the market) down.¡±

Faced with no other alternative, he struck a deal in 2016, pleading guilty to spoofing and wire fraud, felonies carrying maximum sentences of 10 and 20 years respectively. At the time, it seemed impossible that he wouldn¡¯t spend at least a few years in prison.

Once again, there was a twist in the tale. Sarao was only the second person to be criminally prosecuted for the relatively new offence of spoofing, and at the time of his arrest, the agents and prosecutors at the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission were fairly naive about the dark arts of the new electronic markets.

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In a series of debriefings reminiscent of the movie Catch Me If You Can, Sarao walked them through his home videos and explained how to identify market cheats in the order book. With the information he provided, the government reprogrammed the software it uses to identify manipulation. Since then, more than a dozen people have been charged with spoofing, including from some of the HFT firms Sarao so detested, according to prosecutors.

Before he was sentenced, Sarao asked to say a few words. ¡°I spent 36 years trying to find happiness on a path built on a lie,¡± Sarao said, reading from a sheet of paper in a quiet voice. ¡°I did the things society says will give you happiness, and when they didn¡¯t I didn¡¯t know where to look.¡±

Sarao had been addicted to trading, he told the judge, but during his time in prison, he came to realise that it didn't have any deeper meaning for him. ¡°Money doesn¡¯t buy you happiness,¡± he said. ¡°And I¡¯m glad I know that now."

Also Read: How A Science Genius Lost Millions In The Stock Market

What The US Court Said About The Crime

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As per the US Department of Justice's statement in January 2020, on November 9, 2016, 41-year-old Navinder Singh Sarao of Hounslow, United Kingdom, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of spoofing before U.S. District Judge Virginia M. Kendall of the Northern District of Illinois. Sarao was originally charged in a federal criminal complaint in the Northern District of Illinois on February 11, 2015, and was subsequently charged by a federal grand jury in a 22-count indictment filed on September 2, 2015. Sarao was extradited to the United States on November 7, 2016.

As part of his guilty plea, Sarao admitted that during the period from at least January 2009 through at least April 2014, he used an automated trading program, along with other techniques, to defraud and manipulate the market for E-mini Standard & Poor¡¯s (S&P) 500 futures contracts (E-minis), stock market index futures contracts based on the S&P 500 index, through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). The E-mini S&P 500 is considered among the most widely traded financial products in the world. Sarao admitted that he placed thousands of orders that he did not intend to trade, or ¡°spoof orders,¡± to create the appearance of substantial false supply and demand and to induce other market participants to trade E-minis at prices, quantities, and/or times that, but for Sarao¡¯s spoof orders, they would not otherwise have traded. In thousands of instances, Sarao admitted, he was able to induce other market participants into buying or selling E-minis by placing spoof orders, which had the additional purpose and effect of artificially depressing or artificially inflating the price of E-minis.

According to the plea agreement, in instances when a market reaction occurred, Sarao frequently executed real, genuine orders to buy (typically at artificially low prices) or sell (typically at artificially high prices) E-minis. He admitted that he frequently was able to generate significant trading profits from buying and selling his genuine orders close in time with the placement of the spoof orders. As a result of his scheme, Sarao admitted that he was able to make at least $12.8 million in illicit gains.

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